Why would Uber be awarded licensing terms they could "live with" for code they (allegedly) outright stole from a competitor?
Though in many cases its beneficial to use this as a way to become a key supplier to a competitor. If it's not a winner take all market (and I doubt this is), then it might be more profitable to take a cut from Uber than to reduce competition by one.
A Google / Uber joint venture where Google provides the software and Uber does fleet management could be unbeatable, for example.
In fact, the people involved look to have done rather well financially out of it so far.
It really isn't hard to imagine - no one is too rich to be greedy, even billionaires want more money.
It's no fun to be working in such an environment. Everyone who can afford to get out, gets out.
In this case, it really sees this is cut high and dry. We will see but this really looks bad.
Coca-cola was about to buy Gatorate for $13B. Buffett squashed the deal at the 11th hour and Pepsi paid $14B. Buffett presumably thought that Coca-cola could use the $13B to make its own sports drink. It's still not clear which company was wiser.
Sure, although that's an extremely unlikely outcome. Normally the company would be liquidated to pay the judgment (this is basically what happened in Bollea (Hogan) v Gawker - Gawker couldn't afford the damages, so had to declare bankruptcy and sell itself to pay for them).
Obviously, it runs the risk someone else will come along and buy the company instead, but any other buyer will have significant ongoing IP concerns by using google tech vs re-engineering stuff. Hence, Google will probably outbid other buyers since the company has more utility to them than to others.
No money left to pay off the judgment. Most of the talent is gone, and the folks that remain are hardly motivated to rebuild the business for their new masters. The Napster mess is instructive. The brand might live on, but no one gets rich in the process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster#Shutdown
The math still doesn't work.
If there's a $680 million prize for a successful theft, and people think the chances of being caught are low, you'll need a big penalty to act as an effective deterrent.
The problem here is the prize. It's not a paltry few hundred millions. Just in the USA the yearly car sales are above 500 billion and we are talking about disrupting that big time. Really, really big time. It is not unreasonable to think that private car ownership will become deprecated in 20-30 years. Do you think Google won't be happy to burn the $260M they invested in Uber and a hundred more for lawyers over the years to make sure Uber doesn't get an illicit advantage when the time comes of who will be the doorkeeper?
Can you imagine -- and I know Google can -- the possibilities of an ad company selling all the cars there is? Or the software therein which amounts to the same. Your self driving taxi today is free you just need to listen / watch / immerse / whatever happens by then to ads enroute. You can't even count the trillions they would make.
Thinking in conspiracy theory mode I wonder if it could be possible that Alphabet knew about the theft for longer than they admit, waiting for Uber's self driving projects to grow more valuable, kind of like a secret stake. Would that even be legal?
They both have to decide if that might be better than a long and expensive legal battle.